Sensor based surveillance and object tracking typically depends upon sensors of a single type, such as video cameras or thermal cameras. Such sensors generate real time sensor feeds and intelligence is layered on top of the raw sensor feed to detect objects or movements of objects. Advanced systems have the ability to track objects across sensor feeds so that movement of an object of interest across a sensor boundary does not end tracking of that object. Tracking may be continued using a new sensor feed. Such systems are still monolithic in nature and not designed to interoperate.
For example, there is no federation of separate surveillance systems to form a single, integrated surveillance network. Current surveillance systems also lack features in that they do not take advantage of additional types of information beyond that provided by the single type of sensor upon which the system has been based.